1879- Thomas Edison did a public demonstration of his new
invention the Light Bulb. Special commuter trains brought people to Menlo Park
New Jersey for the show.

1881- Los Angeles becomes the first U.S. city to be lit
entirely by electricity.

1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the
Chimes of Big Ben around the world.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp
break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the
Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.

1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal
Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett
called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”. This was to
capitalize on an already popular film title “Algiers” with Charles Boyer “come
with me to ze Casbah” etc..

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control
frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in
Times Square. OOHH FRANKIE !!

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One
Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the
"Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old
time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones
& Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

1958-59- As Fidel Castro's guerrillas closed in on Havana, Cuban
dictator Fulgensio Batista slipped out of a New Year's Party and boarded a
plane for Miami, all arranged by the CIA. Fredo, ya broke my heart…

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the
Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to
play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old
DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on
a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the first L.A. Freeway opened by
Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. Today called the
Pasadena Freeway 110. (interstate U.S. route 66 was in 1932, and The Imperial
Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway 101, in 1958

1941- “I Vant to be
Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion
pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and
was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her
death in 1990.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with
Monty Hall premieres.

1988- the Pixar short Tin
Toy released in theaters. The first CG short to win an Oscar. Until this
win, Steve Jobs was resisting his animation team making films. He was focused
on getting color graphics onto home computers. The film Toy Story began as an
attempt to capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special Tinny’s Xmas.

1913- Cecil B. DeMille had been sent to the West
by his New York partners to scout out a possible place to move to escape
Edison's Patents Trust.

After scouting several cities with year
round sunshine, this day C.B. telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have
proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called
Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not
make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first
official Hollywood Film.

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

1939- Scientist William Shockley first noted in his laboratory
notebook that it should be possible to replace vacuum tubes with something
called a semi-conductor. Eight years later he led the team that developed the transistor.

1964 – To create the first pilot of the TV series Star Trek,
the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivered by model maker Rick
Datin, Jr, based on the design created by Star Trek production artist Walter
“Matt” Jefferies.The “miniature” was 11
feet long!

1965- First day shooting on Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A
Space Odyssey. It was an indoor set at Elstree Studios in England, and the
first setup was the inspection of the excavation of the Monolith in the moon
crater Tycho.

1968- Animator Bill Tytla died at age 64, from complications
of a stroke.

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

1974- While staying at the Polynesian Village in Disneyworld
Florida, John Lennon signed the last papers dissolving the Beatles. The band had
broke up in 1970, but it took four more years to unravel all of their vast financial
holdings. The other three members had already signed.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe
des Capucines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George
Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture
to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of
projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called
their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening
included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of
the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in
the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris. There really lived a
poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was
known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who
helps another man romance his girlfriend Roxanne.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- On The Town,
a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard
Bernstein premiered in NY.

1951- The British film A
Christmas Carol with the memorable performance of Alastair Sim as Scrooge
premiered in the USA.

1962- UPA’s Mr.
Magoo’s Xmas Carol first premiered on TV.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop
charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of
the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It
gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach
Boys, but he had a pretty bad drinking and drug habit. He was once friendly
with the Manson Family.

Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends
sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier.Wilson recalled this very spot was where
after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He
wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “i.e.-diving
holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned, he
miscalculated the depth and drowned.

Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only
one who liked to surf.

1871- The world’s first cat show
opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock
Holmes story the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet
favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera
star Adelina Patti.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO
WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre
in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned
children who laughed and cheered all night. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little
boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter
Pan. Mr Barrie is.” He committed suicide in 1960 at age 75. James Barrie once
said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle
your ears?”

1927-"ShowBoat" debuted at the Ziegfeld
theater. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the musical was written by Jerome
Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play made a star out of a tall black baritone
named Paul Robeson.” Ol’ Man River..”

1935- Radio City Music Hall
opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater
in the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler
announced their separation.

1943- The movie The Song of
Bernadette premiered.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody Show”
debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the
Puppet Playhouse.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first caricature for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend took it to The New York Tribune and sold it. He figured here's a nifty way to make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times.

He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and became a legend himself. In the American Theater, a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moved from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1941- Goofy cartoon, the Art of Self Defense, premiered.

1944- Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1956- The premiere of the Japanese monster movie Rodan. Released in Japan as Radon the Sky Monster.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first pro wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

885AD- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already
been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or
"Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco
The Last Judgment was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel
beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.
Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian.

1815- At a Christmas concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered
his NameDay Overture.

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

1870- Siegfried Idyll,
written by Richard Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife Cosima, was first
performed by a small ensemble outside her door as she awoke this morning at
their home in Lucerne Switzerland.

1917-"Why Marry?"
by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An
Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use
it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service broadcast. An address by
King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary
Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast. In the 1970s their
studio space became the home of Saturday Night Live.

1940- Rogers & Hart’s musical Pal Joey opened on
Broadway. It made a star out of a young dancer named Gene Kelly.

1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67.While in his hospital bed someone saw him
reading a Bible. They said:" W.C., what are you doing with that? "
Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1957- Disney film Old
Yeller premiered.

1962- The film of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird premiered with Gregory Peck, Brock Peters,
and Robert Duval.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey,
Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon
Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He told his father he was inspired to make a
documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make
and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US
and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

1818-the
song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obersdorf,
Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr and music by
a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their church could not afford an organ, so this
first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

1888-
Vincent Van Gogh cuts off a piece of his left ear after an argument with fellow
artist Paul Gaugin over the affections of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent
his ear to the prostitute. She fainted. In 2009 historians theorized his ear
was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword. The two men agreed
to keep the secret to not get Gaugin in trouble.

1922-
The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1925-
The London Evening News published a story “In
which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne.
The first book of stories came out the following year.

1952-
First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “
Forbidden Planet.”

1964-
First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek.
Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when
Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1966-
Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of
6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion. The
loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV
the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition,
and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to
put it back. The log was videotaped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film
ever since.

1968-
Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira
Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the
story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and
David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer
stepped in.Japanese sections were
directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime.

1990-
Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year
old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When
asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it
Wants.."